


(these days) we have each other

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Epistolary, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Southern Jonathan, Texting, a brief love letter to my chemical romance, a complete lack of positive parental figures, also unfortunately featuring, childhood friends/penpal au, copious use of italics, featuring: a weird fusion of scarecrow year one into gotham canon, for parts of it anyway, honestly this is mostly a jonathan character study, jervis being Deep TM
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 09:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: In the niche au no one asked for, two elementary school classrooms from the suburbs of Gotham and rural Georgia are paired up to have their students be penpals for a semester. Jonathan is paired with Jervis, and they become best friends through the assignment. Life can get pretty shitty, but they're always just a letter (or later, a text) away.





	(these days) we have each other

**Author's Note:**

> me? writing more poorly characterized childhood friends hattercrow fic where jervis doesn't rhyme? you bet i am
> 
> see end notes for more detailed warnings than in the tags, title from It's Hard To Be Religious When Certain People Are Never Incinerated By Bolts Of Lightning by Mayday Parade

(Early January, Fourth Grade)

Jonathan scowled at his paper. He didn’t want to do this assignment. It was stupid. Realistically, there was nothing hard about being assigned a pen pal from another school. He didn’t even have to get the letters mailed from home - the school would do it for him. And it was only until the end of the school year. It was already January, so he wouldn’t have to put up with this pen pal that long.

That didn’t mean he wanted to do it, though. Nobody in his class liked him, so why should he write to someone from another class? That would just mean there were even more people that wouldn’t like him. He set his pencil down and crossed his arms with a _hmph_. He squinted at his pen pal’s name. Jervis Tetch. He sounded like a rich brat, which was, in Jonathan’s opinion, the worst kind of person. There was no way he was going to do this.

His teacher, who was walking around the room making sure that everyone was actually writing (as opposed to drawing rude pictures, which had apparently caused a scandal a couple of years before), stopped at his desk.

“Jonathan, why aren’t you writing?” She asked. She was one of those teachers that was still young and hadn’t yet let the enthusiasm for genuinely helping her charges be tempered by the persistent terribleness for which the fourth grade is known. This meant she was understanding and generally approachable, but also that she cared enough to talk to the students, which was something Jonathan found incredibly annoying.

“Don’t want to.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I don’t.”

She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. “Well, everyone else is participating. I’m not going to force you to write, but I did assign this for a reason. It’s not just penmanship - you could make a new friend, or learn about a world outside of Georgia. I’d appreciate it if you joined the rest of the class in this project.”

Jonathan grumbled, but pulled out a piece of notebook paper and a pencil. He still didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t want to cause a scene either. He could put up with four letters in a semester if it meant he could go back to blending into the background.

_Hi. I’m Jonathan. I think your name’s weird. I’ve never met anyone called Jervis before. Are you weird, or is it just your name? It’s okay if you are, I’m weird too._

_I don’t want to do this assignment, but Miss Fields said I had to. (She’s my teacher.) I probably shouldn’t tell you that if we’re supposed to be friends, but she said to be honest, so I’m doing that._

_What’s it like where you’re from? Miss Fields said your class was from Gotham. I don’t know where that is. Is it a city? I’m from Georgia and it’s the worst. I’m not from the city part of Georgia though. They probably told you that already._

_I think I’d like to go to Atlanta someday._

_-Jonathan_

He folded the paper in half and handed it to his teacher, who accepted it with a smile.

Two weeks later, the replies came. Miss Fields passed them out after recess, still in their meticulously addressed envelopes. The half of the class that was actually excited for the assignment tore open their envelopes, and the half that thought they were too cool for it sighed before opening theirs all the same. Jonathan procrastinated until he saw Miss Fields raise her eyebrow at him and give the unopened envelope on his desk a pointed glance. 

He still didn’t want to do the assignment. He didn’t want to read the letter, either. His penpal, Jervis, which he still thought was a stupid name, probably thought he was annoying and weird just like everybody else. If he didn’t read the letter, then he wouldn’t know that for sure. There was always the chance he could actually make a friend, but that chance went away the moment he read it and saw what he was sure would be its disdainful contents. 

Still, after his teacher had given him that look to open the letter like everyone else, he tore the top of the envelope. By accident, he tore the side too, so that there was a very large rip through the center of the letter. The rip didn’t go all the way down the length of the paper though, so he lined up the ripped halves and began to read. 

_Hi Jonathan! I’m Jervis. I suppose my name is weird, but I always thought of it as different. That way it can be fun instead of bad. I’d like to be fun._

_Why are you weird? Your name doesn’t seem weird, so it can’t be that. All the boys think I’m weird because I don’t like playing kickball. Do you like kickball? It seems you have to here. I tried to play once but one boy hit me with the ball and I got a black eye so that didn’t help._

_I’m excited for the assignment. If you don’t want to do it we can send short letters and not talk much. I think it will be fun if we do talk though. I’d like to make a friend._

_Gotham is a city! My teacher says it’s the biggest city in the state. Or maybe the country. I don’t remember. In downtown all the buildings are tall and shiny and everyone wears fancy clothes all the time. I’m not from downtown though. That’s for rich people who are famous. I used to live in England which is cool but I don’t remember and I don’t even have an accent, so people say I’m faking being from there. They’re just mean._

_I’ve never been to Georgia. What’s it like? Other than the worst._

_I hope you write back. I don’t remember how long this pen pal assignment happens for. I wasn’t listening when my teacher said. I still think it could be fun._

_-Jervis_

Unlike his own letter, which was hard to read because Jonathan’s penmanship was less than stellar on a good day, Jervis’s was nearly illegible due to its scrawled, excessively loopy cursive writing. Jonathan knew he was taught to read cursive the year before, but he’d never been very good at it. He had to think long and hard to even read the teacher’s cursive, and she had good handwriting. Looking at Jervis’s gave him a headache. 

He started to write his reply, making sure to use as neat print as he could. About halfway through, he gave up because writing neatly was hard and took time, and, surprisingly, he had things to say.

_I guess it could be fun. Different isn’t fun here. It’s just bad. Can different be good in Gotham, or is it bad there too?_

_I suppose we should try to be friends. If you want. I don’t know how to be friends though, since I don’t have any. I guess you could tell me how._

_I’ve never tried playing kickball. Everyone plays it here too, but I’m not allowed to play because they don’t like me. I don’t know if it would be fun. It seems like the kind of thing that would be fun, but I also don’t think I’d be very good at sports. I like reading better. I read a book about radioactivity last week, and it was really cool. Do you like reading?_

_Gotham sounds cool. Tall buildings and different kinds of people and everything. We don’t have that here. I’ve never left my town, and the only rich person here is Granny, and she’s not even rich anymore. She just likes to pretend and act like she’s better than everyone and tell me I’m going to Hell. And that’s what everyone else is like too, because there’s always someone for them to be better than, and a lot of times that’s me. Is that what people are like in the city too?_

_That’s why Georgia is the worst. It’s hot and the air feels like you’re breathing underwater in the summer and everyone hates everyone and apparently everyone is going to Hell. That part seems right, because bad people go to Hell and everyone here is terrible._

_I shouldn’t say stuff like that. I’m trying to be nice and positive so we can be friends, because you seem like a positive type of person. Also I don’t want to get smited. Smitten? Smote? I don’t want God to kill me with lightning._

_-Jonathan_

_PS can you write in print? I don’t know how to read cursive yet._

This time, when he handed his letter in to his teacher, Jonathan was excited. He was absolutely certain that Jervis was weird, but he thought that was okay. He might have a friend.

He didn’t stop being excited during the next two weeks as he waited for the reply. Sure, everyone was still the worst, and his dad left on another ‘business trip’ and he got his lunch stolen not once but three times, but nothing could dampen his enthusiasm. As much as he’d hated the assignment at first, he was glad for it now. Because he had a friend, and things were looking up.

It was raining the day the letters arrived. They were dry when Miss Fields passed them out, but her yellow rain boots squeaked on the linoleum floor and the building smelled faintly of mold. The teacher smiled at him when he opened his letter right away, as if to say “See? I knew this would be good for you.” Jonathan avoided giving her the satisfaction of smiling back and read the letter.

_Different might be bad here too. It is for me anyway, but other people who are different are cool, so I’m not sure. I guess I just like to hope it could be good._

_I don’t know how to be friends either. I don’t have any. But I’d like to be friends with you, so I guess we can just make it up if neither of us knows how. I think it’s being nice to each other and meaning it and talking to each other, so we could do that, if you want. We already have to talk to each other for the assignment, so if we’re nice and mean it then we would be friends, right?_

_I love reading. People say I’m a nerd because I read but I think to be a nerd you have to be good at school and I’m not so I can’t be a nerd. I’m not smart enough. And I don’t know why it would be bad to be good at school and read stuff. Are you a nerd? Because I think that would be cool._

_I read lots of stuff, but my favorite thing is Alice in Wonderland. It doesn’t make sense and I like that because life doesn’t make sense either so it’s the same, but Wonderland doesn’t try to make sense so it doesn’t feel like a lie. Have you read Alice in Wonderland? I would ask if you liked it but if you didn’t maybe don’t tell me that._

_Georgia sounds awful. Why does everyone tell you you’re going to Hell? Is it because you’re from Georgia or because they think you’re terrible? Because I don’t think you’re terrible. Just a bit of a negative person, and that’s not the same thing at all._

_I’m not sure Hell exists, but if everyone in Georgia talks about it then it might. Nobody talks about Hell here. I heard once on television that gays were going to Hell but I don’t know what that means. If happy people are going to Hell too then everybody must be, so I don’t think it’s real. It might be made up to scare you, like monsters under the bed. My mom says Bigfoot is made up too, but I’m not sure about that. Do you think Bigfoot might live in Georgia? He definitely doesn’t live in Gotham._

_You don’t have to fake being positive to be friends. If that’s a rule then we can ignore that bit because then it’s like you’re being someone you’re not. And I don’t think God is going to kill you. If he tries I’ll stop him._

_-Jervis_

When Jonathan finished reading the letter, he couldn’t help it. He laughed, just once, but it was enough to get a couple dirty looks from the kids sitting next to him and another glance from Miss Fields, who looked like a proud mother. He glared at her, just to be contrary.

Jervis was weird. They’d only sent each other two letters. But he was a lot like Jonathan, if more fantastical and strangely philosophical. They were both utterly alone and wanted to be friends and Jonathan didn’t think Jervis had it in him to lie. So when he wrote his reply, he added a line on the end.

_If you want, we could keep writing each other letters after the assignment ends. I’d like to still be friends with you in the summer._

(September, Sixth Grade)

Despite how nervous he’d been writing it, Jonathan now credited that extra line as being one of the best decisions of his admittedly young life. Though during the school year students had only received one letter every two weeks, once summer began and the school system no longer controlled their post, that changed. Thanks to some miracle of the postal system, Jonathan received and sent two letters a week. This quickly fell into a routine, lasting through the summer, the next school year, and going strong. 

Jonathan didn’t know how he would have gotten through fifth grade without the promise of two letters a week. He was in intermediate school now, and instead of being the oldest in elementary school and thus immune to bullying by the younger kids, even if his class bullied him enough to make up for it, now he was the youngest again. He hated it, but he wasn’t strong enough or popular enough to stop the constant insults and less frequent but still common thrown pencils, erasers, rocks, and, on one memorable occasion, punches.

But it was okay, he told himself as he wore thin, baggy clothes to hide bruises and lied to his mother so she wouldn’t worry. Because he was smarter than any of them and he was going places and they would stay to rot in this swampy hellscape forever. And he had a friend he wrote increasingly longer (and neater) letters to as Jonathan began to feel Jervis was the only person he could trust. 

This, combined with the overwhelming feeling of stagnation that pervaded his hometown, was probably why he was so surprised upon opening Jervis’s first letter of the new school year. Nothing changed for Jonathan, except he was a little taller and a couple of the popular girls in his class had started wearing colorful makeup. So he expected nothing to change for Jervis. Unfortunately for him, life doesn’t quite work that way.

_We have a new student in our class this year. Of course, there are new students every year, but I like her, which is why I’m telling you. I think you’d like her too._

_Her name is Alice, and she’s shorter than me and asks a lot of questions in class, but they’re smart questions, so it’s good. At recess she’s quiet though. Also, she’s really pretty. I don’t think I have ever like-liked someone before, but I like-like her._

_-Jervis_

Jonathan glared at the letter. He’d never been angry after reading a letter from Jervis before. Usually, they were the highlight of his week. Alice was taking his friend, and he didn’t like it. 

The way it was supposed to be was that Jonathan didn’t have any friends except Jervis, but this was fine because Jervis also didn’t have any friends except for Jonathan, and life had worked like that for a year and a half, but now it was different. Jervis having other friends meant that Jonathan should have other friends too, except he didn’t. He hadn’t really wanted any, because having one was enough and also everyone else hated him and he hated them too, even if he could only talk to his friend in two letters a week.

He couldn’t even process the idea of Jervis having a crush on this girl. Neither of them had ever had a crush on anyone before (or if Jervis had had one, he hadn’t said anything, and he was the type to say something about everything). Jonathan didn’t really know how having a crush worked. He was fairly sure it meant thinking someone was nice and pretty and wanting to date them, but since he didn’t classify anyone he knew at school as ‘nice’, the other two didn’t really matter. 

He tried his best not to sound angry as he sat down to write his response. After he finished it, he read it over, and concluded that he had not succeeded but it was also not going to get any better if he rewrote it.

_I wish we got new people in class here. There’s only forty people in my whole grade and I’ve known them all forever. They suck._

_She sounds nice. Is she your friend now?_

_Also, do you like her because she’s called Alice or because of the way she is? Because it seems like a big difference to me._

_-Jonathan_

When Jervis’s response arrived four days later, he glared at the envelope before opening it. He didn’t like being mad at Jervis, but he was. He certainly wasn’t going to tell him he was mad, either. Then he might have to justify his anger, and being jealous was definitely not an acceptable reason.

_Only forty? We have almost nine hundred, and I’m not in a big district. I guess that’s part of being in a city though. I’m sorry everyone sucks._

_Alice is apparently definitely not my friend. I tried to talk to her two days ago and she told me I was ‘creepy’. It’s not my fault though. I was just really nervous and I forgot how to talk for a moment and then I accidentally recited the beginning of the croquet scene of Alice in Wonderland instead of saying what I meant to. I’m not going to talk to her again._

_I don’t just like her because of her name. That’s kind of insulting. ~~That was a part of it, though.~~_

_-Jervis_

The last line of the letter had clearly been written and scratched out, but it was still readable. Jonathan resisted the urge to punch the air in vindication and found himself regretting that he didn’t have a name from that stupid book before he decided to never think that ever again.

February, Seventh Grade

Life is supposed to start changing in middle school. It’s supposed to be the start of growing up, of navigating the cliques that never go away but just get better at hiding, of getting first crushes and teasing friends about their crushes. It’s supposed to suck, but to always have an air of possibility, like better things are just on the horizon.

For Jonathan, that horizon wasn’t high school, as it was for so many others. He was waiting, as he’d been waiting his whole life, for college. He wasn’t stupid; he knew nothing was going to get better for him when he moved from the middle school building into the slightly larger high school building a mile away. So he’d set his sights on college early, looked forward to a time he could move across the country, it didn’t matter where, just to find somewhere new. From the time he was ten, he’d been waiting for high school graduation, the day he could leave Georgia and never come back. He just had to tough it out until then.

Of course, with this focus on the future, he didn’t stop to think that he might not make it there.

It wasn’t a particularly cold night when Jonathan’s father left a still-smoldering cigarette in the ashtray. It was actually quite mild, for February. Outside, the air was still, a stagnant fifty-something degrees unbothered by any sort of wind. Only the most determined crickets were still chirping. At around one in the morning, the thick layer of dew on the house’s crabgrass lawn evaporated as the fumes from a gas stove burner that hadn’t quite been turned off found the cigarette and caught fire.

Jonathan’s father, who had fallen asleep on the couch in the next room during a late-night Animal Planet documentary, felt the heat of the flames and ran out the back door. Jonathan, who had been sleeping quite soundly in his bed and having a very strange dream of flying in which he may or may not have been a bird, didn’t notice the fire until it snuck under his door and started climbing up the walls. He grabbed a box from under his bed and jumped out the window. He sat on the lawn, ignoring the pain of his freshly twisted ankle, dew soaking into his hoodie and clutching the box of letters that he’d instinctively saved as he watched his house go up in flames. 

Jonathan’s mother, who had been exhausted from work and sleeping dreamlessly, never woke up.

When Jonathan walked in to school the next day, limping but too stubborn and too poor to go to a doctor, missing all his homework and textbooks, and smelling faintly of smoke, the teachers pitied him. The other kids ignored him, seeming to recognize that picking on a kid the day after his mother died was too much. But the constant concern and pity set Jonathan’s nerves on edge. He wasn’t fading into the background, and he didn’t like it. By the time he’d left school for the day, he’d decided to put all his anger and sadness and hurt into a little box at the back of his mind and never look at it again. He was going to be fine, because he had to be. He just had one thing to do first.

Jonathan found a hidden table in the corner of the library, pulled out a sheet of paper, and started to write.

_I don’t know if I can say this to you, but I hope I can. I trust you, and I need to say this to someone, and I want to tell you._

_My mother died today. My house burned down last night and she was inside it and if you tell me you’re sorry I’ll travel up to Gotham and kill you myself. I don’t want people to be sorry._

_The firemen said it was a freak accident. One in a million. I don’t care. It was my dad’s cigarette and that means it’s his fault and I know he knows that too because he won’t even look at me now. I hate him. I don’t just hate him because I’m angry though, because I know you’re going to say that. I hate him because he leaves all the time and when he’s around he only pays attention to his work and his projects and I know he cheated on my mom and I think he regrets having a kid._

_I don’t miss my mom yet. I think I will, but it’s only been a day and all I feel is angry. I think I’ll have to move in with Granny, and she’s worse than my dad. At least all he does is forget about me. Mom was nice. She cared. I want to miss her._

_You won’t be able to write to my address anymore, since it doesn’t exist. I’ll send you my new one when I know where I’m going. If you read all this, thank you for still being here._

_-Jonathan_

He dropped the envelope in the post box outside the library. He wasn’t sure if he believed in God, or Heaven or Hell, or any of it, but he sat on the curb and looked up at the clear blue sky and hoped. His mother had believed, and if there was anything after this, maybe that would be enough.

(Spring, Seventh Grade)

The funny thing about grief is that it never happens the way you expect it to. Jonathan didn’t cry at the funeral, where they lowered an empty coffin into the family cemetery behind Granny’s chapel. It hadn’t been rainy then either, or cold, or any sort of gloomy. It was still February, but the sun was hot and the sky was clear and if he hadn’t been throwing a handful of dirt in his mother’s grave it would have been the kind of day that was full of possibilities. Full of hope. Afterwards, Jonathan heard Granny whispering to his father about him. 

“I’ll never understand how she failed with that boy,” she whispered, drying her eyes with a handkerchief that Jonathan was sure was entirely for show. “Does he even care?”

And Jonathan did care, but he couldn’t show that to Granny’s satisfaction. He moved through life in a dull haze of anger and numbness, more determined than ever to fade into the background of his own life until he could get away. Emotions became weakness. He could never perform them to please Granny; he wasn’t sad enough, then he should be happier and more appreciative of what he still had, and on and on. Soon, the only place he felt safe enough to express any form of emotion besides blankness and acquiescence were in his letters to Jervis. 

Jervis had written back as soon as Jonathan had sent him his new address, and though he’d refrained from saying “I’m sorry” outright, it was threaded through every line of his letter. But he hadn’t offered pointless, overused phrases of sympathy and he hadn’t tried to give Jonathan any false optimism about things getting better, and he appreciated that. 

His father had dealt with things by leaving. Both he and Jonathan had decided to detach themselves from their lives, but while Jonathan still had Jervis and the promise of college to get him through, his father had nothing. He buried himself in his work, as though the more papers he graded and manuscripts he edited, the further he could run from his grief and self-blame. Almost as soon as they’d turned up on Granny’s porch, their only possessions in a single backpack, he’d given up parenting entirely. And so Jonathan sat down to dinner with Granny every night, was dragged to church with her every Sunday, after which she would drill him to see if he’d paid attention to the sermon, tried his best to navigate around her constant disapproval and frequent attempts to forcibly change his behavior. When summer rolled around and school stopped, Granny put him to work taking care of the house and grounds, claiming it built character. The relentless Georgia sun burned his hands and neck until the skin peeled, and he never said a word.

(Winter, Eighth Grade)

Jonathan didn’t listen to music often. When he did, it was mostly classical or religious music, the stuff Granny played on her antique record player. There were scratches in most all of the records, and the tinny sound barely filled a room.

He knew most of the country hits of the past decade, as almost every store in town piped them through the speaker systems. They all seemed to glorify farm work, which Jonathan hated, and sex, which he wasn’t interested in. Aside from those and a handful of ‘classics’ (he’d heard drunks singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ enough times that, despite never having heard an actual recording of the song, he was fairly confident he knew all the words), music wasn’t something that crossed his mind.

The first time he heard anything different, he was in line at the grocery store, holding a gallon of milk and a can of beans. The woman in line in front of him, who probably wasn’t more than 25 but to Jonathan’s young eyes appeared much older, dropped her cell phone and the headphones ripped out. A tattoo peeked out of her sleeve as she fumbled for the phone, desperately trying to pick it up and hit the pause button before anyone heard what was coming out of her phone. It almost worked.

Though Jonathan didn’t know it until he mustered up the courage to tap on her shoulder and ask her what she was listening to (an act he only succeeded in doing because he knew he couldn’t run out of the store after asking, as he hadn’t paid yet), what he’d just heard had been the bridge of ‘Helena’ by My Chemical Romance. When he surreptitiously looked the song up on YouTube at the library the following day while he was supposed to be doing homework, he almost cried.

Though logically, he knew it was just a song and shouldn’t affect him that much, he didn’t really care. He wrote about it in his next letter to Jervis, because it felt important. It felt like more than a song.

_I heard a new song today._

_I didn’t use to like music, but I like this. We never talk about music, so I don’t know if you like it or not. But here everything sounds like it’s played on a banjo in a hayloft and it sucks. But I heard a new song today and it’s called Helena and it sounds like I feel._

_I’m listening to it as I’m writing this. I have to listen on YouTube because I’m at the library and the video kind of creeps me out but in a good way. Also there’s a lot of men in eyeliner in the video and this confuses me. I’m scared someone is going to see me watching the video even though I’m not doing anything wrong. I guess I’m just scared to be interested in something._

_That’s why I like the song, I think. Because I’m not allowed to feel things except when I’m writing to you and even then it’s like writing things down filters out some of how I feel. But when I’m listening to the song I feel like it’s okay to be angry or sad and I feel like I don’t have to pretend not to be._

_I don’t know if that made sense. Is this how music is supposed to feel? Almost like relief?_

_-Jonathan_

He dropped the letter in the post box before he could regret sending it. Almost as soon as it disappeared into the box, he wished he could take it back out, because it felt too personal. Every day until the reply came, he worried he’d said too much, exposed too much of his soul and that it was going to come back around to hurt him. No matter how many times he told himself that it was just a short letter and that he’d been more vulnerable before, he couldn’t quite convince himself. 

He didn’t know why he worried. Over the past four years, Jervis had never once been mean to him or purposely hurt his feelings. Every letter that came proved that, and yet, he couldn’t help but stay on edge anyway.

_I don’t know what a banjo is, and I don’t think I know the song you’re talking about, but I don’t listen to a lot of music. I usually don’t get music, but I don’t know why. It’s just all so much and so much of it is the same, and generally I don’t need extra background noise in life. I spend so much time lost in my head daydreaming that I can make my own. But I think I get what you mean about the song sounding like you feel. That’s how Alice in Wonderland is for me - it thinks the way I think, so I can understand it in a way I can’t understand most other things._

_I’m glad you found the song. I can’t imagine trying to not feel things, but maybe that’s just because feelings are more important than pretty much everything else for me. I think if you shut off one feeling, they all go away, so I’d rather be sad or angry or anything else because it means I get to be happy too. I guess it doesn’t work that way for everyone though. I hope this makes you happy._

Jervis then proceeded to spend some time rambling on about a bird he’d seen in his backyard and how it reminded him of his math teacher ( _They both go on and on and I don’t know what they’re saying, but they absolutely think I do_ ) before switching topics to a trip back to England his family was supposedly taking, ( _My dad says we’re going to go, but I don’t want to. I definitely want to go to England, because people think that’s cool and maybe then someone at school will talk to me, but I don’t want to go with my parents because they’ll just yell at each other and pretend I don’t exist the whole time, and I don’t want to see my family, I don’t even know them._ ) before finally re-addressing Jonathan’s letter.

_I don’t know if I wasn’t meant to read the line you crossed out, because I could definitely still read it, but if I wasn’t supposed to then I can just pretend I never read it. But you said that the men wearing eyeliner was confusing and I was wondering why that was. Because here lots of people do that, but I don’t know if that’s just a Gotham thing, because this city is incredibly strange. I think it’s usually for the same reason girls wear it, if that helps any. Do people not wear makeup in Georgia?_

_-Jervis_

Jonathan smiled. It was just like Jervis to read and comment on the crossed-out line in his letter, because of course he would. He’d never had a very good understanding of what was an overly personal inquiry or comment, though he’d gotten better at it (after Jonathan had snapped at him one too many times). But it was nice that he asked, even if it was annoying, because it meant he took the time to look. After so many years being ignored until it was time to be yelled at, Jonathan was glad he had someone who was genuinely interested in who he was as a person. Even if that meant reading quite literally under the lines and asking him questions that could sometimes go too far.

And above all that, it was nice to read Jervis’s letters, which were always rambling and curious and never quite seemed to get to the point. If anyone else had tried telling him about a bird in the backyard, Jonathan would have laughed and insulted their intelligence. But instead, he laughed at Jervis’s dumb joke and looked forward to the random, generally unimportant things he noticed, and it was good.

Jonathan has never found the ability to ramble nearly as much. He generally responded to Jervis’s comments as he made them, paragraph by paragraph, and added his own thoughts on the end of the letter. Sometimes this section was the longest - it covered four days of his life, and a lot could happen in four days. Sometimes it was nonexistent. As he sat down to write his response, the final section grew and grew until it was longer than the rest of the letter put together.

_Be glad you don’t know what a banjo is. Seriously._

_And I guess everyone has to have something that they understand, that makes sense in a way other things don’t. I’m glad you have your book, even though your level of attachment to it is admittedly concerning. I never thought mine would be music._

_I don’t like music usually, it’s too loud and distracting and it makes me feel trapped. But I’ve been listening to more of this type of music, and even though it’s louder than almost anything else it feels quiet to me. That doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. It’s so loud, even when the volume is down, that it almost stops registering, and if I close my eyes I could almost pretend like nothing else existed. I don’t want to though. I don’t think there’s much use in denying reality._

_Still, I like being able to be upset, even if I can’t let myself cry, or be able to be angry, or to fully hate this place._

_And to answer your question, people wear makeup here. Girls do. It’s the kind you can see from far away, thick and with enough blue over their eyes it almost hurts to look at. They try to look like plastic, and I don’t know why. Men don’t wear makeup, and they don’t wear eyeliner, and they definitely don’t cry. So it’s confusing. But it’s not bad._

_I think I’d like to do that, if I had the self-confidence. And if it wouldn’t make Granny mad. Then I wouldn’t feel like I have to match to everyone else here. It would be like a way I could show how different I feel._

_~~Also, I think they are kind of hot, and I’ve never thought anyone was hot before, so that’s confusing too.~~ _

_-Jonathan_

He made sure to cross that last line out several times, scribbling over it until he was sure it wouldn’t be readable. It had felt important to write, like he was admitting something, though he didn’t know what, but he wanted that admission to be to himself. It was embarrassing and, for now, for his eyes only.

Jervis’s next letter was heavier than usual. The bottom was thicker than the top, and when Jonathan picked it up he could feel something inside it. Ripping open the top revealed a small eyeliner pencil tucked in beside two pieces of paper.

_I got this for you :)_

_I don’t know if it’s the good kind, it’s the first one I saw. I hope you like it, but if you don’t, you can just throw it away._

_-Jervis_

_I like it. Thank you._

_How did you get that? Do your parents just let you buy makeup? I can’t imagine that._

_My dad saw me wearing it. I hadn’t even left the bathroom, and it was only half applied, and he asked me if I was trying to look like a girl in a tone that very much implied I had better not be. I suppose the hair didn’t help with that, as I haven’t cut it in months. I like it better this way though. It feels nicer._

_This stuff doesn’t come off, because after that I spent an hour trying to scrub it off my face before I went down to dinner, and it didn’t entirely work. I still had black specks around my eyes and I looked like I’d been crying._

_Granny told me that eyeliner and music was Devil worship. That doesn’t make sense to me, but nothing she says ever does. I had never said anything about music to anyone but you, but I guess the remnants of eyeliner were all she needed. If I had needed more confirmation that she despises emotion, that would have proved it. I think if my father hadn’t been there, she would have tried a more severe way to make sure I stopped my ‘Satanism’. I guess he’s good for something after all._

_I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I do appreciate the gift. It was nice when I wore it, even if it was only for a short while. I felt like I finally had control over something, even if that ended as soon as I stepped outside of the bathroom. It’s weird, feeling free but knowing that freedom only lasts behind a closed door and while I’m invisible._

_-Jonathan_

_I’m sorry they reacted like that. Are you okay?_

_From what you’ve said of them, they don’t seem like very good people. Does she think everything is about the Devil? Because that’s the impression I’m getting. I don’t understand how you being happy can be evil though._

_I googled it and apparently you need makeup remover to get eyeliner off. I didn’t think about that before. Do you need some? I could get you some if you wanted._

_My parents don’t care what I buy. They do, but only so they can use it against each other. If I have to buy something, they just blame the other for not buying it for me and don’t consider that they didn’t buy it either. I didn’t buy that though. I stole it from CVS, so it’s not a big deal. Shoplifting is ridiculously easy when you put your mind to it._

The letter continued on from there, detailing the weird fashion trends that people in Gotham seemed to think was cool and devolving into a complaint about standardized testing and midterm exams, rambling on for nearly half a page about how Jervis didn’t like snow and was displeased with winter before concluding on a slightly confused note about Christmas carols.  
Jervis was, Jonathan thought as he hid the eyeliner he wished he could use in his bookshelf, incredibly strange. Still, he was really lucky to have a friend like him - not just anyone would shoplift eyeliner for their friends with controlling parents on a whim. Not for the first time, he thanked a God he wasn’t sure existed for the assignment that had given him not only the only person who would put up with him, but who actually enjoyed it.

(April, Eighth Grade)

_Hey Jon? I’m sorry I didn’t write back to you the other day. I’ve been trying._

_I like to write to you when I’m happy. It doesn’t always work out that way, but most of the time I try to be happy and focused. Your letters make me happy, so that helps a lot. But this time I just can’t._

_I think it’s been a week. I can’t remember the last day I wrote to you, and time isn’t cooperating with me right now, but it seems like it was about a week ago. I still read yours. I didn’t mean to ignore them._

_My dad isn’t here anymore, and I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t think he’s dead, but my mom won’t tell me. She won’t say anything. It’s quieter now, but I find I’ve gotten so used to the fighting that I almost miss it. At least then I knew I wasn’t alone._

_I’ve been pretending everything is okay. I don’t really think it was ever okay, but it was normal, and now everything feels dead. Sometimes I’m not sure if they didn’t both leave. I think if I pretend hard enough then I’ll be okay, but something always pulls me out of my head and I hate it. I don’t want this to be happening._

_-Jervis_

_My mom doesn’t smile anymore. She just sits and stares into space and sometimes she brings home random people and I don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes it feels like so long since I’ve seen her be happy, but I know it’s only been a week or two since he left. Maybe three. Was she happy before then?_

_School is going to be out next month and for the first time I’m dreading it. I’d rather be ignored at school than be ignored at home. At least one of those I’m used to._

_I don’t know what’s happening. One of the neighbors came by this morning and dropped a pointed comment about Social Services. I can’t do that. And it’s not so bad here, really. If I ignore everything, pretend everything is as I want it to be. Even if I don’t quite know how I want it to be._

_The garbage is falling out of the bins and I’m running through the last of the cans in the cupboard and if I have to leave here it’ll be so much harder to write to you._

_I can pretend a lot of things, but I can’t pretend not to feel anything the way you did. If I have to change my address, I’ll be sure to tell you._

_-Jervis_

_School will be out in two weeks. This is the first year I’m not counting down to the last day - or I suppose I am, but I don’t want it to come. I had to leave home last week. The neighbor called the police on my mom for child endangerment, and now I can’t go back. I wasn’t in danger._

_It’s weird, how you start to miss times that weren’t even that good. Time does that, makes the past appear better than it was and gives the future more hope than it can possibly possess. I hated going to England last summer so much, spending the entire trip trapped with family members I couldn’t connect with and forced to see my parents fake smiling at each other. At me. I read so much on that trip. I think that was when I first learned to pretend hard enough to forget, because I don’t remember much. And now that I look back, it appears almost like paradise._

_I’m staying in an abandoned apartment. I think the building might be condemned, because there’s nobody around. It might have been condemned for a while. But the water is still running and it’s so dark in here that it doesn’t get too hot in the daytime, and it’s better than nothing. I’d die, if I were on the streets. If the weather didn’t get to me, the gangs would. There’s a lot of children that go missing in Gotham._

_I stole my mom’s wallet. She’ll cancel the cards eventually, but I think it will take her a long time to notice they’re gone. I’ve got a post office box now, so you can write to me there. I don’t think they send mail to condemned buildings._

_I hope it isn’t condemned because it’s toxic. I’m sure it isn’t._

_-Jervis_

**Author's Note:**

> i put warnings in the tags, but here they are again: this story takes place in the rural American South, and though it's set roughly along the timeline of my life (late 2000s to modern day), that doesn't mean that the South is the most accepting place to be. As such, there's lots of implied and stated homophobia, some people getting upset about men wearing makeup, etc. This has elements of scarecrow: year one, specifically granny keeny and all the child abuse that comes with her, though it's much less explicit than in the comic. some parental figures die, others abandon their children, etc. basically what I'm saying is this isn't an especially lighthearted fic. It is rated G though, nothing is explored in-depth or graphically at all. if anyone thinks this needs any more warnings, please let me know and I'll update them.
> 
> If you enjoyed, feel free to drop a comment below (they feed my soul) or yell at me on my sadly-not-scarecrow-themed tumblr, @alpacasandravens :) this story should be either two or three chapters, but I'm not sure yet.


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